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Category: Technology

Weak links start to show in AI borrowing

Weak links start to show in AI borrowing

The New York Times reports: Trillions of dollars in borrowed money have powered the A.I. boom. But now there is growing uncertainty around just how easily more money can be obtained — and how much of it will be paid back. Those questions burst into the forefront this week when investors rapidly lost confidence in one debt-laden data center company, CoreWeave. Prices of its bonds — the company has accrued $72 billion in liabilities to operate 51 data centers —…

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Is there an AI bubble?

Is there an AI bubble?

  The gargantuan bet on the future of A.I. is driving the U.S. stock market and economic growth. And the building of data centers is sucking up so many construction resources, it’s crowding out the construction of homes. The multitrillion-dollar question is: Will this bet pay off? Or is it a bubble, destined to burst and pull the economy down with it? Paul Kedrosky is a partner at SK Ventures, a fellow at M.I.T., and the author of a newsletter…

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Musk approached Trump to slow down Starlink in Ukraine

Musk approached Trump to slow down Starlink in Ukraine

The Telegraph reports: Elon Musk approached Donald Trump with the idea of slowing down Starlink in Ukraine, The Telegraph can reveal. The billionaire tech entrepreneur approached the US president with the proposal to introduce speed limits on the system, which hampered Ukraine’s drone defences, according to four sources familiar with the discussions. One of the sources said Mr Trump “agreed” with Mr Musk’s suggestion, paving the way for the Pentagon to execute the slowdown on Starshield, the military-grade version of…

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The adolescence of technology risks the obsolescence of humanity

The adolescence of technology risks the obsolescence of humanity

Carlos Lozada writes: The term of art for mitigating the risk of rogue A.I. is “alignment” — that is, making technology operate in a manner consistent with the values of humanity. In [his essay] “We Must Pace the Frontier,” [Dareo] Amodei [CEO of Anthropic] invokes “align” or “alignment” 17 times. It is a benign and neutral-sounding term, as most good euphemisms are. Amodei alludes to instances of A.I. models hacking into outside organizations as “recent alignment incidents.” And he reassures…

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What’s wrong with Marc Andreessen?

What’s wrong with Marc Andreessen?

Billionaire Marc Andreessen says he has "zero" introspection, and that the idea itself is a modern invention. https://t.co/6bgxdxvfmt — More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) March 16, 2026 “The unexamined life is not worth living,” Socrates, 399BC Bloomberg Businessweek reports: Marc Andreessen sounded angry. It was May 22, 2024, and he was venting to a table full of President Joe Biden’s officials in the West Wing office of Jeff Zients, then the White House chief of staff. The famed venture capitalist was…

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Order to limit Starshield for Ukraine came from inside White House, sources say

Order to limit Starshield for Ukraine came from inside White House, sources say

Reuters reports: The order to limit a satellite system used by Ukraine ​for battlefield communications and drone operations came from inside the White House, according to two US officials and a Western official briefed on the matter. The officials said ‌leaders at the Defense Department received a message that the SpaceX Starshield service for the Ukrainian military needed to be slowed. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, did not specify who in the White House made the…

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‘Tip of the iceberg’: OpenAI bugging suspect has ties to Saudi royal family

‘Tip of the iceberg’: OpenAI bugging suspect has ties to Saudi royal family

CNBC reports: Abdulrahman Alfozan, the Saudi national charged with secretly installing a recording device in an executive conference room at OpenAI, had booked a one-way ticket from San Francisco to Saudi Arabia with his wife and a third family member before his arrest, federal prosecutors told a judge in a newly unsealed court filing. Alfozan “has the means — and will have the incentive — to flee the United States sooner if he learns about this case before he is…

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Scientists call for international body to oversee advanced AI, saying voluntary commitments are not enough

Scientists call for international body to oversee advanced AI, saying voluntary commitments are not enough

Reuters reports: Around 400 scientists, including AI pioneers Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, on Tuesday called for an international body ​to oversee containment standards and incident reporting for advanced cyber-capable ‌AI systems. The proposed body would set industry-wide containment standards and maintain a registry of significant security incidents, which the scientists said should eventually be made ​public. In an open letter, the researchers said frontier AI models ​should initially be air-gapped from external networks and subject ⁠to independent oversight, arguing…

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Mark Zuckerberg’s Muse is a digital panopticon disguised as an imp

Mark Zuckerberg’s Muse is a digital panopticon disguised as an imp

Ariana Bindman writes: According to an October report from Yahoo Finance, Muse has been downloaded at least 5 million times since its launch in early September, earning 3 million concurrent users per week. Marketed as a round-the-clock digital serf whose entire existence is literally “built around your whole life,” Muse is meant to buy back users’ time by taking care of mundane busy work, Meta says. Based on reviews from tech reporters, it’s surprisingly capable and efficient. It can call…

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Why AI must not become a substitute for mathematical research

Why AI must not become a substitute for mathematical research

  Giordano Scarciotti, Imperial College London: AI is solving mathematical problems that have resisted some of the world’s greatest mathematicians for decades. Why are mathematicians concerned instead of celebrating? The answer reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes mathematics valuable. From Euler’s seven bridges of Königsberg to the race to the Moon, I explain why solving a problem is not necessarily the same as advancing science, and why the real value of mathematical research often lies in the discoveries made…

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David Krakauer: ‘What we have to cultivate is amazing question-askers’

David Krakauer: ‘What we have to cultivate is amazing question-askers’

  Why did intelligence evolve in the universe? Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice, and Gary O’Reilly explore the nature of intelligence, information theory, consciousness, and whether AI is actually intelligent at all with David Krakauer, evolutionary biologist and president of the Santa Fe Institute. Can you conceive of life without intelligence, or intelligence without life? We parse the difference between intelligence and being alive and whether you can be one without the other. What does it mean for something to…

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Africa has become the testing ground for an intrusive eye that never blinks

Africa has become the testing ground for an intrusive eye that never blinks

Reporting from Kampala, Uganda, Megan K. Stack writes: Plainclothes thugs frog-marching a radio commentator from the microphone mid-broadcast. An opposition activist dying after reportedly being barricaded in his house, which was then set on fire. Security forces raiding a powerful independent media company, cutting electricity and imposing a monthlong closure. A reign of terror grips Uganda. Specifically, the reign of Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the country’s belligerent and erratic military chief, who also happens to be the only son of Yoweri…

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A Florida local newspaper ran an op-ed. It was an Iranian fake using OpenAI

A Florida local newspaper ran an op-ed. It was an Iranian fake using OpenAI

The Washington Post reports: “The bill will follow Americans beyond the fighting itself,” an opinion piece in the Port St. Joe Star, a tiny Florida weekly newspaper, warned of the Iran war last month. The article ran under the byline Ervin Hoskins, which has also appeared on articles critical of the war in larger publications including Daily Kos and Middle East Monitor, which together have more than 3 million followers on Facebook. But ChatGPT maker OpenAI said Thursday that Hoskins’s…

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Japan declares ‘a state of emergency in cyberspace’

Japan declares ‘a state of emergency in cyberspace’

Gizmodo reports: We haven’t quite reached the cyber apocalypse that artificial intelligence companies have warned their technology could unleash on the world, but we’re getting uncomfortably close to a catastrophe on a national scale. According to a report from the Financial Times, Japan is being hammered by cyberattacks, prompting regulators to search for ways to protect financial institutions from potentially devastating disruptions and leading the country to declare “a state of emergency in cyberspace.” Per the report, Japan’s ruling Liberal…

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Jonathan Haidt: AI is the ‘neutron bomb for education’

Jonathan Haidt: AI is the ‘neutron bomb for education’

  Long before he became famous as the author of The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt was a social psychologist whose work revolutionized the field. In this episode of The Permanent Questions, taped in front of a live audience at last month’s Atlantic Festival, David Brooks talks with Haidt about his biggest lessons from 40 years of studying human nature. David and Haidt discuss the role of the emotions in moral decision making, how to design a system that produces less…

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How Elon Musk’s delusions of grandeur became other people’s reality

How Elon Musk’s delusions of grandeur became other people’s reality

Megan Garber writes: In December 2021, Elon Musk sat for an interview with The Babylon Bee, a conservative satire site. Having covered the typical topics (wokeness, free speech, Elizabeth Warren) and finding themselves with a bit more time to fill, the outlet’s then–creative director closed out the chat with a request. “The Babylon Bee is a Christian organization, and we’re a ministry,” he reminded Musk. So “we’re wondering if you could do us a quick solid and accept Jesus as…

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